Submitted by Marrok_Chanteloup t3_10k1aq1 in space
The_Istrix t1_j5nuba6 wrote
Looking at it like the multiverse splitting with ever decision seems a little anthropomorphic to me. I'm certainly not a physicist but I figure it's closer to how quantum uncertainty works, like an electroc being theoretically anywhere in a certain energy level around an electron. So you've got all this quantum soup sploshing around and we only really observe one possible configuration of it. Maybe all of the others possible exist at the same time, but only one is our "real" universe because that's what we observe.
Nychtelios t1_j5nvoeb wrote
In the many-world theory, actually, human choices are not the cause of "splitting", but wave functions collapsing (probably involved in human choices too).
AterCygnus t1_j5o1xnj wrote
Incorrect. The Many Worlds interpretation directly posits that collapse never actually happens; instead all wave functions are equally likely to occur, somewhere. This is the core pillar of the entire concept - that the wave function is real and that we should trust what the logical evolution thereof tells us.
The Everettian argument is that wavefunction collapse is a concept of human arbitration, and that it has never been observed in nature. In fact, experiments have managed to put ever larger systems into states of superposition. Instead of collapse, modern Everettians suggests the observed becomes entangled with the observer, which in turn results in the given amplitude, but alternative states of observation also exist - perhaps in some speculative multiverse of inflatory cosmology.
Nychtelios t1_j5o2uws wrote
Yes, you are totally right. I was only trying to simplify the concept. Thank you for the clarification!
ben_db t1_j5nvm84 wrote
That's how my uneducated brain sees it. It's like if all possible outcomes are just probabilities on a bell curve, and we're sat somewhere on top of the bell, but the infinite possibilities stretch out at each end infinitely.
However this bell curve is in 3D space and might be better thought of as a gradual blurring, as more possibilities spread out from a single fixed point of observation.
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